Open Technology Week 2015

MRes student Tiesheng Wang presents a Sensor Team Challenge prototype at this year's Open Technology Week.

A prototype sensor for monitoring elderly people in their own home has been presented at the 2015 Open Technology Week which runs from 26-30 July at a number of venues across Cambridge.

Open Technology Week - an opportunity for the Sensor CDT to get involved
	Make-athon in Cambridge Makespace - meet likeminded people in a supportive and innovative setting.
Made within 2h: a prototype microfluidics well for biophysics experiments Programme Manager Oliver Hadeler joined a team of physicists and engineers to look at different ways to manufacture microfluidic devices. A well with a diameter of 100µm was cut into perspex with a laser cutter and inspected using a modified Raspberry Pi camera. This process cuts out the multi-step lithography process used to make microfluidic devices in PDMS. Future work: develop advanced microfluidic devices and make them in the Institute of Manufacturing.

 MRes student Tiesheng Wang presented the Sensor Box to an audience of enthus

iastic engineers and scientist from academia and industry in the Department of Engineering. The Sensor Box contains sensors to monitor temperature, light level, movement and noise inside a person's home and sends the data to a server for further processing. E.g. if an elderly person normally gets up at 7am in the morning the light levels will go up. If this event is missing a smart algorithm will trigger an alarm and alert carers, family or friends.

The sensor is developed using open source hardware such as mbed or Particle board processors. The technological challenges are to reduce power consumption while ensuring a reliable connection to the server. The students use lab spaces across the University, e.g. Engineering shown on the right.